this post was submitted on 06 Sep 2023
21 points (66.7% liked)

Europe

8484 readers
1 users here now

News/Interesting Stories/Beautiful Pictures from Europe πŸ‡ͺπŸ‡Ί

(Current banner: Thunder mountain, Germany, πŸ‡©πŸ‡ͺ ) Feel free to post submissions for banner pictures

Rules

(This list is obviously incomplete, but it will get expanded when necessary)

  1. Be nice to each other (e.g. No direct insults against each other);
  2. No racism, antisemitism, dehumanisation of minorities or glorification of National Socialism allowed;
  3. No posts linking to mis-information funded by foreign states or billionaires.

Also check out [email protected]

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
all 35 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 91 points 11 months ago (2 children)

This topic is muted in France – immediately met with counter-arguments about life expectancy, junk food, inequality, etc.

Those pesky things like quality of life indicators. Everyone knows there's only one number that matters and that's how much money you have in dollars, right? And by you, we mean the top 1%. /s

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago
[–] [email protected] 47 points 11 months ago (2 children)

That's a really misleading article. Badly written and polarizing by leaving out crucial information. It's basically clickbait.

The GDP per capita, adjusted for purchasing power, in the US was at $76,398.6 in 2022, while the Euro Area had $56,494.2 and the EU $54,248.6. A gap is there but it's not nearly as dramatic as this article makes it sound.

(I'm sure most of you know this, but I'm still clarifying for the few who don't.)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

And even that doesn't take into account that there are much more super rich people in the US making an insane amount of money.

I don't have any statistics but I would guess the median income in the US probably isn't that high compared to their cost of living.

[–] [email protected] 34 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Lotta good that higher GDP is doing the lower class in the US right now

[–] [email protected] -5 points 11 months ago

It would be fun, but only for a few minutes. The security and prosperity of Europe depends on the alliance with the USA, whether we like it or not. Could we survive without them? Of course. But we'd be more vulnerable and less rich.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Why does it feel like I'm reading a weird right wing paper from France? This thing kind of reads like propaganda. America might have 14 trill gdp but our debt is higher...

[–] [email protected] 13 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Especially since government spednign might not be wise. Perfect current example is Russia. The GDP is not falling due to the government spending a lot of money on the war against Ukraine. I somehow doubt that building tanks, to be blow up by Ukranian artillery is making the next generations of Russians richer.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago

I heard somewhere that when the gdp measure was created some people advocated that the military expenditure should be subtracted from the total gdp as it is produced to be destroyed. So it would be fun to have a gdp graph where this is reflected.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 11 months ago

What has the debt to do in anything whatsoever?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago (1 children)

all i want in this life is to see the US collapse

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

You probably wouldn't like the outcome

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

I'm already eating my popcorn as it happens.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

The Americans don't care about these issues. They have inexhaustible energy resources, as the producers of 20% of the world's crude oil, compared with 12% for Saudi Arabia and 11% for Russia.

Well, France, US oil production surged because the US made use of hydraulic fracturing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fracking

France

Hydraulic fracturing was banned in France in 2011 after public pressure.[8][26][27][28] It was based on the precautionary principle as well as the principal of preventive and corrective action of environmental hazards, using the best available techniques with an acceptable economic cost to insure the protection, the valuation, the restoration, management of spaces, resources and natural environments, of animal and vegetal species, of ecological diversity and equilibriums.[29] The ban was upheld by an October 2013 ruling of the Constitutional Council following complaints by US-based company Schuepbach Energy.[30]

In December 2017, to fight against global warming, France adopted a law banning new fossil fuel exploitation projects and closing current ones by 2040 in all of its territories. France thus became the first country to programme the end of all fossil fuel exploitation.[31][32]

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago

And they did well so, as fracking is disastrous for the environment and local communities. In the towns nearby fracking sites, people effectively lost their previous access to clean water, because the aquifiers are poluted with toxic sludge.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

Also, they were talking about oil in the article, but I'd point out that natural gas is also available via use of hydraulic fracturing.

https://www.velaw.com/shale-fracking-tracker/resources/france/

According to the European Parliamentary Research Service (β€œEPRS”), France has the second largest shale reserves in Europe after Poland.1 The EIA estimates that France has 137 trillion-cubic feet (β€œtcf”) of technically recoverable shale gas resources.2 The country’s most prominent shale reserves are located in several regions including the Paris Basin and the South-East Basin.3 These reserves are unlikely to be developed in the near term, however, because hydraulic fracturing has been banned by the French Government since 2011.4

More recently, France has begun to explore legal means through which it could ban the importation of shale gas from the United States. Critics of the potential ban have called it β€œunworkable,” as convention and unconventional gases are typically mixed to together during transportation.